Ned Marcus
Inkling
With self-publishing it depends how good you are at marketing. How good you want to become.
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Self Publishing: Interested?
- Thread starter Righmath
- Start date
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- marketing opinion publishing
Moore_Attuned_Ed
Acolyte
I guess it really depends on your mindset and how you view the pros/cons of each.
As it's already been mentioned, trad publishing takes plenty of time for progress to be seen – you could be waiting from months to years (more likely) to get your book through the chain until a senior editor says 'let's publish this book!'. During which time you could have have your book self-published and be making sales on a book you'd have had more creative control on.
But saying that, going down the self-publishing route means you'd need to fork on way more on advertising, editing, cover design etc. (although even when trad publishing, you'd maybe want to consider at least developmental editing to get it to a stage publishers would accept, which costs a hefty bit of coin).
One thing I don't see mentioned much is selling direct to the reader through your own website. Here's a pretty great discussion on the subject:
It is an hour long, though. But some techniques used by Emily Kimelman are the pay-what-you-can-afford approach, which generated a decent amount of revenue, and including unique offers like merchandise that's exclusive to her website. Could that be an option for you?
Best of luck with it!
As it's already been mentioned, trad publishing takes plenty of time for progress to be seen – you could be waiting from months to years (more likely) to get your book through the chain until a senior editor says 'let's publish this book!'. During which time you could have have your book self-published and be making sales on a book you'd have had more creative control on.
But saying that, going down the self-publishing route means you'd need to fork on way more on advertising, editing, cover design etc. (although even when trad publishing, you'd maybe want to consider at least developmental editing to get it to a stage publishers would accept, which costs a hefty bit of coin).
One thing I don't see mentioned much is selling direct to the reader through your own website. Here's a pretty great discussion on the subject:
It is an hour long, though. But some techniques used by Emily Kimelman are the pay-what-you-can-afford approach, which generated a decent amount of revenue, and including unique offers like merchandise that's exclusive to her website. Could that be an option for you?
Best of luck with it!
Prince of Spires
Auror
I didn't watch the episode (I will at some point), but I think the main issue with selling direct is that it's very hard to scale it unless you put a lot of effort into it.
The thing with other platforms is that they reward you for sales. If you go to one of my novels on Amazon, then at the bottom of the page you'll see a reference "readers of this book also bought", where it shows part 2 in the series. But also if you go to a few other books from other authors you'll find my novel there. Amazon also sends out emails to buyers advertising their next book. The more sales you get, the higher you'll rank in certain results and so on.
All this means that the more I sell on Amazon the more organic sales I'll get.
Selling direct this is a lot harder. I could create a website that attracts a lot of natural traffic. That would take a lot of time and effort though. Otherwise, I'll be reduced to always spending money on ads to drive traffic there. And if I'm doing that, then maybe sending them to a store where they have shopped before makes me more money. People are more likely to buy from Amazon than from some random online website.
What I've heard of other authors is that for most of them, direct sales plateau at a certain level, simply because they can't drive more traffic to their own website easily.
Also, having a website that sells stuff internationally can actually be quite the hassle. Don't underestimate how much work running a succesful webshop is.
The thing with other platforms is that they reward you for sales. If you go to one of my novels on Amazon, then at the bottom of the page you'll see a reference "readers of this book also bought", where it shows part 2 in the series. But also if you go to a few other books from other authors you'll find my novel there. Amazon also sends out emails to buyers advertising their next book. The more sales you get, the higher you'll rank in certain results and so on.
All this means that the more I sell on Amazon the more organic sales I'll get.
Selling direct this is a lot harder. I could create a website that attracts a lot of natural traffic. That would take a lot of time and effort though. Otherwise, I'll be reduced to always spending money on ads to drive traffic there. And if I'm doing that, then maybe sending them to a store where they have shopped before makes me more money. People are more likely to buy from Amazon than from some random online website.
What I've heard of other authors is that for most of them, direct sales plateau at a certain level, simply because they can't drive more traffic to their own website easily.
Also, having a website that sells stuff internationally can actually be quite the hassle. Don't underestimate how much work running a succesful webshop is.
Moore_Attuned_Ed
Acolyte
Oh definitely! I'm aware it'll be a ton of work to make it a successful venture, and I haven't researched too deeply into the ins and outs of it. I just thought it was worth a mention in case it was something the OP hasn't considered and would have been of interest.
